My book “Abandoned – The Beauty in what Remains” will soon be available for purchase at Göteborgs Konstmuseum. It’s already on the bookshelf at Malmö Konsthall. It’s great to have such a niche book at both cities’ premier art museums. For those of you who aren’t near either place, the book can also be ordered via Amazon here.

I photographed this view last night as Charlotte and I walked back from a restaurant in the “Castletown” (Slottsstaden) district of Malmö. These last few days of warmer temperatures and plenty of sunshine are a clear indication that spring has finally arrived – and not a day too soon. Even my walk to the gym in shorts early yesterday morning was quite pleasant, especially since dawn was just starting to break.

It felt undeniably strange to wander around ITB Berlin – the world’s largest travel trade show – yesterday.

Perhaps that’s why it took extra time to navigate the halls, which this year were once again filled to the brim with happy people and colorful exhibits striving to showcase countries, cities, and inspiring experiences.

At the same time, I’m 100% sure we were all trying not to think about the fact that the man who so desperately craves the Nobel Peace Prize has just initiated a major war – one that risks being long-lasting and devastating for us all. This was most visually striking at Israel’s large but completely abandoned pavilion, and in the almost negligible presence of the USA, where the largest exhibitor was represented by the state of Florida’s minuscule booths.

Anyway.

We clocked over 20,000 steps, chatted with plenty of lovely people in the travel industry, and shared news about Charlotte’s popular site for airline staff. We were met with genuine enthusiasm everywhere; soon, the 240,000 who already follow her Facebook page are bound to grow even more in number.

We also managed to greet the always-cheerful cabin crew at the Thai pavilion and sign up for an upcoming press trip to Azerbaijan.

Our long day in Germany ended, as it should, in a genuine Biergarten with a perfectly prepared schnitzel and cold beer, served by waiters in Lederhosen to the sounds of oompa-oompa music.

Once back at the hotel, the reflections returned: What is actually happening? Why must the world be ruled by angry older men who use religion and cult-leader tactics to trick their populations into believing that theirs is the only right way?

It’s pathetic that these old men refuse to evolve, choosing instead to fall back into that same safe Stone Age mentality. Dumb-asses.

Today will surely be another long day with gallery visits along Auguststraße and perhaps a look into Fotografiska.

The Safari book is coming along. Most of the heavy lifting isn’t out there in the bush anymore – it’s here, in front of a calibrated screen, choosing which images deserve a page from a curated collection. That might sound simple. It isn’t. Editing is its own form of travel. Time travel.

Some images have some kind of memory attached. I can remember where I stood, how the dust smelled, what the air felt like at 05:42 when the light tipped from blue into gold, the silence before something moved.

Others don’t even remember taking them. I recognize the place, but not the feeling. I know I was there. I can read the metadata. But the memory is thin, almost administrative.

That’s the strange tax of how technical photography can be. Especially if you’re like me, a full manual shooter.

Often, I am so locked into angle, shutter speed, aperture, focus area, depth of field – the micro-decisions that separate a mediocre frame from a usable one – that I’m not fully inhabiting the moment. I’m calculating, adjusting, anticipating. I’m thinking in fractions of seconds and millimeters.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a payoff worth paying. Without that discipline, the image wouldn’t exist. The new book wouldn’t exist.

But when I look at some of these hippos, for example, I feel the gap. The composition works. The exposure is right. The detail is there.

Yet sometimes I struggle to reconnect with the simple fact that I was standing in Botswana, watching prehistoric mass rise and submerge in delta water older than memory.

I know I was there. I just wasn’t as present as I would have liked to be. In the moment.

“I ache in the places where I used to play.”

Leonard Cohen wrote that line decades ago, and while I am by no means a huge fan, I have a lot of respect for his art and perseverance.

Even though he was far younger than I am today when he sang it, that particular line drew me into the song. At first, I thought it was mostly about physical pain. Aching knees. Stiff back. Weakening eyes. Shoulders that once carried a load without complaint. There were many risks I took without hesitation. Physical demands I met without resistance. Then one day, I noticed that I was often negotiating with myself.

Can I really deliver this?
Should I take on that project?
Do I still have something to say?
Does anyone even care?

Today, I’m about ten years older than Cohen was when he wrote Tower of Song. But aging doesn’t always begin when you get old. For me, the onset of arthritis invited aging much sooner. Nowadays, I feel debilitating fatigue after a long day, and when I sit uncomfortably, even for just a few minutes, I’m reminded that sciatica never really heals.

And then there’s artistic ache.

The world accelerates. Tools change. AI now generates images, text, and music. I can either complain about it or learn to use it. I can either declare decline or adapt and attempt to evolve. The temptation to romanticize “how it used to be” is sometimes too strong.

Cohen didn’t romanticize.

He didn’t say he owned the Tower of Song. He said he was paying rent inside of it – just like all artists committed to their creative calling. Paying rent means showing up. Continuing. Accepting that being an artist isn’t a title – it’s a responsibility.

You owe it to the gift you have been given to create and to share.

I don’t get to live off yesterday’s work forever. I have to contribute, or see myself drift downward into abysmal obscurity. I choose to work. To revise. To adapt. To endure.

There’s quiet dignity in acceptance. In moving forward. Maybe not as a Shinkansen but as a steam-powered locomotive. Chugging somewhat steadily along, focused more on the here and now than on the past.

As I work on new books, refine writing, curate images, obsess over covers, and experiment with tools that didn’t exist two years ago, I recognize something: my aches haven’t stopped me. Instead, the pain has sharpened me and forced me to focus more on the really important stuff.

If that’s the rent I have to pay with age, I still feel solvent.

The image above is a self-portrait from the book New York City, available for order by clicking here.

I’ve been quietly working on a new book project and, as is usual, once there’s a curated compilation of candidate photographs, I’ll get to work on the layout process by deciding on the cover. I realize that to some, this might seem counterintuitive. But after having produced so many books, it’s become a reliable way for me to get seriously involved in a new project.

After selecting several potential cover designs, I typically ask close family and friends to pick their favorites and if possible, motivate their choice. At this stage, before I am too emotionally invested in a book project, I welcome input with an open mind and heart.

For this book, which documents the four safaris I’ve been incredibly fortunate to experience, I felt trepidation as I chose the cover. As this is a pure photography book, the adage of not judging a book by its cover doesn’t hold up. On the contrary, the cover is going to play a defining role in how well the book performs on a store’s increasingly competitive bookshelf.

Fortunately, my ambivalence vanished once I showed my three finalists to someone with considerably more wit and wisdom than I, who made the final choice feel as obvious as a leopard’s spots – which, incidentally, was one of the alternative cover shots.

If memory serves, this scene was captured when the young rhino (lower right) and I locked eyes. It seemed unintimidated by the jeep I was standing on, nor the long, white camera lens I was wielding.

As my invaluable collaborator (who I’ll assume would prefer to continue enjoying anonymity) pointed out, this could be either innocent curiosity or a brief moment of defiance toward its mother or father, seen further up in the image.

We’ll never know.

That mystery is exactly what made this cover the right choice – unlike the others I had contemplated, which felt far too anticipatory – read: boring.

Now that the cover is set, I have a guiding visual plot that will make the process of narrowing down the book’s compilation of safari imagery much less ambiguous.

I’ve said it before, but it truly bears repeating: finding someone who loves you for who you are – and who, year after year, stays even as the patina of age becomes more visible – is something worth honoring on Valentine’s Day.

It’s easy to talk about love as butterflies or grand gestures. But the kind of love Charlotte and I have shared for nearly 30 years – we met in the fall of 1996 – is something rarer: patience, humor, creativity, and the ability to look past flaws without diminishing the good.

The willingness to listen when I go on and on. To stay when I’m stubborn, sharp-edged, sensitive, or slightly ridiculous. To still want to share the everyday routines, the adventures, and the small details that make up a life.

How lucky I’ve been – and still am.

Charlotte chooses me, again and again, with open eyes and a generous heart.

My Valentine. Every day. All year long.

The above photo was taken earlier today.

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What the hell was I supposed to do? Dip my hands into that filthy toilet bowl?

I had just changed trains, grabbed a dozen handles and railings, pressed buttons, and probably touched a fair number of surfaces of questionable cleanliness. So the very first thing I wanted to do – needed to do – once I got on board for my final train ride for the day was give my hands a proper, thorough scrub. Being the optimist I am, I simply assumed there would be warm water left in the tap in the restroom of car 5 on SJ’s high-speed train to Malmö.

For once, the restroom was unoccupied, though not exactly spotless… Foolishly, I didn’t begin by checking whether there was any water in the tap at all. Instead, I pressed the soap dispenser five or six times, filling my hands with rich, foaming lather. I started washing – rubbing and working the soap into my palms, between my fingers, and every crevice and crevasse I could locate. When I felt the soap had reached every tiny crease and corner, I pressed the red button next to the faucet symbol.

Dead stop. Not a single drip or drop.

So there I stood, somewhere between Alvesta and Älmhult, with foaming hands as white as the Småland wintry forest the train was racing through. Since my hands would almost certainly become even dirtier if I dipped them into the bowl, which had probably been clogged ever since the train left Stockholm, I shook off most of the foam, grabbed a few paper towels, and wiped away much of the lather. Then I walked to carriage 6 and queued up as third in line for that restroom instead. After a while, I was finally able to wash off the remaining soap, which by then had nearly dried.

The moral of the story, naturally, is always to check the water before things get too foamy.

When we woke up yesterday morning to a gloomy, snowy, windy Saturday in February, we made two decisions: Charlotte promised to fry up a tall stack of her delicious pancakes, and we agreed that, despite the crappy weather, we’d still make the day as worthwhile as possible. Said and done – we forced our way through the slush toward Malmö Central Station to catch the Öresund train to our nearest refuge: Copenhagen.

I’d be lying if I didn’t tell ya’ll that one of Malmö’s absolute best qualities is its proximity to the ever-inspiring Danish capital. Technically, it’s just a bridge away from what the Danes like to call “dejlige.” We always get a creative boost when visiting Copenhagen. Danish design and aesthetics permeate almost everything – even when the city is mostly covered in a thick layer of wet, sticky snow like it was yesterday.

We had two goals for our visit: to see the exhibition “Japan Modern Poster” @designmuseumdanmark and then to find a decent café on our way back toward Copenhagen Central Station. When my health app hit 12,500 steps, it was time to rest our legs, eat something, and quench our thirst with a tasty beverage. We accomplished all our missions. We eventually got back home again, having navigated yet another heavy snowstorm on the way from Malmö Central.

Today, here in Västra Hamnen, a thick layer of fresh white snow has once again blanketed everything. Time to dig out the big winter boots once more and surrender to this unusually long and stubborn winter.